Tale As Old As Time
by buttercupbella
Summary: In another world, they had their own once-upon-a-times and not so happy ever afters. The Alices as the beloved characters in various twisted fairy tales that are interrelated in one way or another.
1. Chapter 1

In another world, they had their own once-upon-a-times and not so happy ever afters. The Alices as the beloved characters in various twisted fairy tales that are interrelated in one way or another.

* * *

**Sumire Shouda**

* * *

She escapes to the meadow - treading, running, stumbling over blades of grass which could possibly be stained with her blood if she doesn't get away fast. The loose curls on either side of her face dangle like ropes washed with gasoline and her lungs catch fire from hours of trying to find refuge. Her porcelain skin gleams under the sun as a proof of the beauty that clearly says _I am Snow White_, and dooms her to be the fairest girl in the land - and be killed for it.

Just as her knees are about to buckle underneath her dress of red, blue, and yellow, her eyes linger on a tiny empty cottage in the horizon.

It is then that she thinks that beauty has such a terrible price to pay, but she tastes salvation on the corners of her crimson lips and makes her way to the house that will eventually be her home.


	2. Chapter 2

In another world, they had their own once-upon-a-times and not so happy ever afters. The Alices as the beloved characters in various twisted fairy tales that are interrelated in one way or another.

* * *

**Hotaru Imai**

* * *

The bubbles on the slippery floor boast of liquid prisms as she scrubs, scrubs, scrubs away the last of the residing dirt. She isn't born for this - cleaning the abode of three female idiots who hold the ends of their ballgowns with their fingertips. Instead of staging a revolution, however, she quietly scrubs, scrubs, scrubs and lets her back ache from tidying all day.

Sometimes, her cropped ebony hair stings her purple eyes but she doesn't speak a word or a curse - she isn't afraid that they might hear her. She is simply quiet and her mind creates more wonders than her small, unused mouth does. The evening that she learns of the social event in the palace, she sits in the company of foul-smelling mice and sews her own dress, pricking her thumb every now and then. She dreams of having a crown on her head, of seeing glass chandeliers suspended from the ceiling, of lazing on a velvet throne that is intended for her, only her. That is why she attends the ball tonight - she seeks riches and not the love of a prince. After all, her mind is always above anything else, including her mouth and most especially her heart.

She is not born for emotion nor sentiment. No, not at all.

But as she waltzes in the arms of a man whom people look up to, she counts her breaths and heartbeats and nearly trips on her feet. The prince smiles at her, twirls her, makes her fall in love with him - but her mouth refuses to cooperate, and all her mind could come up with is a series of illogical premises that tells her of the two things she loathes the most - sentiment and emotion - yet couldn't stop from emerging.

When the clock strikes twelve, she tucks a small box of diamonds in her arm and refuses to feel guilty. She sprints down the spiral staircase, past the guards, and she looks back, wondering why a certain blonde male isn't following her steps. She is a decent runner, but she kicks off one of her glass slippers and disappears into the hazy midnight. The 'accident' is on purpose - the fragile shoe is her heart itself, never to be retrieved by her again. It will be left in the middle of the red carpet and perhaps found by the prince who deserves it. The glass slipper will be a memory immortalized in amorphous substance, and as the Cinderella she is or was, she will be remembered as the one that got away.

And she is right, as she always is - the prince drops his hand and muses over the abandoned slipper, thinking that Cinderella must have been a mystery, an intelligent woman, and a fool as well -

Because in order to run away, Cinderella needs someone to chase her.

It isn't the case at all.


End file.
